Talk:Comparison of DOS operating systems

Regarding the question mark in the column, "Integrated disk compression utility?", for MS-DOS 7.1, it is my belief that MS-DOS 7.1 does offer DRVSPACE.BIN. I believe drive compression via DriveSpace is offered in Win95/98, but not for FAT32 partitions. Please don't consider me an authority on this. If you edit the page based on this, please verify it. MCalkins 20:16, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Changed title
I changed the title from "x86 DOS Comparison" to "Comparison of x86 DOS operating systems" on the grounds that it seems more consistent with other articles of this type. Unfortunately, "DOS operating systems" does suffer heavily from RAS syndrome, but "DOS implementations" doesn't seem better (because nobody says "DOS implementation"), and "DOS versions" doesn't feel precise enough (it could be misread as "MS-DOS versions", since "version" usually implies different versions of a single product). I also thought about whether it should be "x86" or "x86-based", but I don't think "-based" really adds any clarity, so I left it out. - furrykef (Talk at me) 02:12, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Notes DOS 8.00 solutions
I added to notes section two tips for overcoming shortcomings of DOS 8.00 without modifying at least IO.SYS, and avoiding COMMAND.COM modification by using 4DOS (used at some time as NDOS in NU 8.00), and too minimal one-byte patch solution to COMMAND.COM from: http://www.edm2.com/index.php/RIPLing_Windows_Millennium_Edition Wikinger (talk) 15:09, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Dos 2.x - Info missing
Any reason for that ?

Just a recap on the significance of 2.x, it introduced hard disk support for the 1st time, a big deal in the day. 10Mb limit, iirc. fat12, 16 ?

218.111.21.172 11:42, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

PTS-DOS
Was released at 1991 or earlear. At Middle of 1990-x years, it splits to 2 indepdent lines - PTS-DOS from Phystechsoft & PT$-DOS (spelled at russian as 'Pe-Te-Buks DOS' from Paragon. Due to migration of it's main developer (Garry Shumar) to Paragon, later extensions of this 2 lines were totaly incompatible. After some time PT$ DOS was renamed to Paragon DOS. S.Felix from ru.wikipedia.org


 * The latest version of PTS-DOS calls itself DOS 7.10. The paragon DOS 2000 v3 calls itself DOS 6.80, or (32-bit) 7.01.  It is clear that both of these come from a common source (eg they have run/rh), but have since diverged.  ParagonDOS has a facility to read cdroms without any *cdex.exe, but directly through the kernel.  One creates a pointer to the device name (/D=...) in config.sys, and a letter is allocated accordingly.  Wendy.krieger (talk) 08:23, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

LDOS
I made an entry about the release of LDOS, which was simply awesome. See http://www.lists.ufl.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind04&L=linux-l&T=0&P=82159 and http://lists.celestial.com/pipermail/filepro-list/2004-December/005503.html and http://www.tim-mann.org/ldos.html. If this isn't appropriate here, please move it somewhere that it will be appropriate. Thank you. Svanslyck 11:50, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

PC-DOS
After the IBM-Micrsoft split, IBM decided to compete on the DOS front. IBM DOS 5.00.1 was the first DOS to be released to non-IBM machines. The readme in the IBM download 'dos5eiub.exe', explains how to convert an IBM-hardware-only upgrade into a general upgrade for any vendor's DOS. IBM 5.02 was released also for the OEM market too, appears to be all of the previous fixes amd tbe utilities 'INTERLNK/INTERSRV' added. IBM 5.02 dates are (ymd) 1992.09.01

A product which the manual calls "IBM DOS 6.0", but the readme calls "IBM DOS 6.1", was released with file-dates 1993-06-29, time 12:00:00. This is a four-diskette layout, that was packaged in the same manner as DOS 5 (even down to the same Windows icon). It supports the MS-DOS dblspace.bin compression interface, but has no compression itself (this was available by coupon).

The PC-DOS 2000, is actually version 7.00A, not 7.01. This appears mainly to be the assorted PC-DOS 7 files, slip-streamed into PC-DOS 7.0, and sold on six 1440k disks, rather than 1 1440K + 4 XDF. By the time of this release IBM had already exited the DOS market, and both PC-Company and Boca Raton (the home of DOS) had ceased to exist.

IBM has also "released" PC-DOS 7.10, which appears as a boot-disk only DOS (like that of DR-DOS 7.04/5). This is based on the 7.0 source, but with support for FAT32 (but not long file names). Norton Ghost uses this to build floppies. At least four different builds of this have been seen. According to IBM's documentation of this, Microsoft's FDISK of Win98SE vintage runs under it.

--Wendy.krieger (talk) 10:50, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I added entries for PC-DOS 6.1, 6.3 and IBM DOS 6.0 to the tables. --Wendy.krieger (talk) 09:34, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

End of hardware-dependent MS-DOSes
MS-DOS was originally released by OEMs for a number of different, incompatible x86 machines. At some point all versions collapsed into a single IBM-compatible version. At some point, probably the same point, MS-DOS became marketed only by Microsoft, I think (not sure). If someone knows when these things happened they're worth adding. Was it DOS 3? Pol098 (talk) 23:35, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Retail versions of DOS begin with DR-DOS 5. At this point, Microsoft (MS-DOS 5.00), and IBM (IBMDOS 5.00.1) entered the retail upgrade market too.  DR-DOS 6 inspired similar clones from MS (6,00, 6.20, 6.21, 6.22), and IBM (6.00, 6.10, 6.30).  Other companies entered the foray, eg Datalight (6.00, 6.22, 7.10), PTS-DOS (various, like 6.50, 7.10), Paragon (6.80, 7.01) etc.


 * Microsoft did provide to OEMs source code to modify bits of DOS. The leaked DOS 6 code was in fact the kit provided to Microsoft for OEMs to compile.  Custom versions of DOS 5 for Dell and Toshiba are known.  By this time (1990) computer parts were common enough for home-grown and small OEMs to manufacture computers (but not laptops), and these were provided with stock versions from the assorted vendors (MS, DRI, IBM).  IBM DOS 4 was the last to feature BASICA relying on rombasic.  The BASICA in dos 5 supposedly loads rombasic from its code, but this conflicts with new memory management and bios restrictions.


 * It should be recalled even today, that OEM supplied copies of MS Operating systems (eg Win9x, WinNT), are sold by and supported by the OEM vendor. DELL for example, modifies some of their versions so that they can only be installed on DELL machines.  Wendy.krieger (talk) 09:55, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

"The end of MS-DOS" (@4)
Microsoft announced the end of MS-DOS some time after the release of 4 (I think), only to resume when the IBM collaboration on OS/2 fell through. This is perhaps relevant to the timeline. Pol098 (talk) 23:38, 8 April 2008 (UTC)


 * The announcement is real. The idea was that DOS was taken as far as was seen, and that some heavier OS was needed to handle multitasking operating systems on networks.  This required breaking the 640K barrier in a consistant way.


 * Two things changed this: DR-DOS 5 became popular, and dosx.exe allowed Windows to mature. Microsoft succeesfully cloned DR-DOS 5 and DR-DOS 6, while adding hidden features and comingling DOS and Windows source, in an attempt to link DOS and Windows together.  In DOS 7/Windows 4, this was released as a single package, there is a good deal of doubt that these were a comingled product, as opposed to co-bundled.  Wendy.krieger (talk) 08:03, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

NX-DOS
GPL'd version of DOS, see sourceforge page and extensive linuxdevices.com page --Enric Naval (talk) 03:18, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

GS-DOS
GS-DOS (General Software DOS)is a form of embedded DOS, for which a distribution has circulated on the internet.

The package is labeled GS-DOS 4.04, but the DOS emulates MS-DOS 6.22. The supplied utility set consist of things more of interest to people embedding software on devices, rather than a stand-alone replacement for the big three.

Wendy.krieger (talk) 06:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

DOS Compression
Compression appeared in the DOS kernel beginning with DOS 6.

One could note, for example, that "DOS supports compression", and "DOS comes with compression" are two different things.

The first means that DOS merely supports the API's to load a compression driver before processing config.sys. The same version of DOS can support several versions of this, eg PC-DOS 7.0 = dblspace.bin + stacker.bin, but only has stacker.

The second has a supported compression layer.

For this i list the binary files for "supported compression loaders", and the compression name where this is supplied by DOS.

dblspace.bin is supported by all MS/PC DOS from 6.0 onwards.

drvspace.bin is supported by MS-DOS 6.22 onwards

stacker.bin is supported by PC-DOS 7,00 onwards

DBLSPACE is supplied in MS-DOS 6.00, 6,20. Dropped for reason of legal issues with Stacker

DRVSPACE is supplied in MS-DOS 6.22 and Win9x.

SSTOR is supplied in DR-DOS 6, PC-DOS 6.1, 6.3. IBM 6.0 appeared before IBM had licenced a compressor. SSTOR emulates dblspace.

STACKER is supplied in PC-DOS 7.0 and 2000, and DR-DOS 7.0 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wendy.krieger (talk • contribs) 07:33, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

Timeline of DOS
The first paragraph of the article ("Key Points of DOS history") is not a comparison but a timeline similar to the Timeline of OpenBSD. I intend moving this part to a separate timeline article. Any objections? Ghettoblaster (talk) 10:49, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
 * If none of the data I originally put in and others added to is lost, I have no objections.--MARQUIS111 (talk) 16:07, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Done. Timeline of x86 DOS operating systems Ghettoblaster (talk) 17:36, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Udo Kuhnt maintains DR-DOS 7.01 not 7.02
The Enhanced DR-DOS project, maintained by Udo Kuhnt, is (as is noted on both the DR-DOS page and the Enhanced DR-DOS website) based on DR-DOS 7.01, not 7.02. I have moved the reference accordingly. CNJECulver (talk) 18:54, 5 March 2011 (UTC)

MS-DOS 7.10/8.0 partition size limit
The partition size limit is 2TB on MS-DOS, not 124.55GB. 124.55GB is only the maximum for Scandisk. The Microsoft-Knowledgebase article also only mentions Scandisk. You can run a HDD under DOS and Win 9x w/o ever using Scandisk. File system scans are not required for running a HDD and if you don't want to use a partition w/o scanning the filesystem, you can also use third party software. The reason why the limits is 2TB and not 8TB is that MS-DOS doesn't support sectors with more than 512 Bytes. --MrBurns (talk) 14:32, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

SHARE.EXE
I would really like to see somewhere (anywhere) information on which systems supported file sharing. Introduced I guess to compete with Novel Netware, Share.exe controled file locks in the underlying file system so that data files could be shared. Started with DOS 3.0, replaced by VSHARE.386 in Win 3.X, removed from DOS 7. But what about Novel DOS, DR DOS, PC DOS? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.206.162.148 (talk) 07:58, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

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